13 Best Face Serums for Men in 2024

Face serums are usually a late addition to a facial skincare routine, but it is definitely one of the best investments into helping your skin look and feel better. A serum is also kind of a buzzword, where most people don’t know what it actually entails.

A serum in skin care is something a bit different to the usual definition of the word. In this case, a serum is a thinner, more lightweight product that usually has moisturizing capabilities. Serums also tend to be more intensely concentrated with active ingredients, and may have additional functions like anti-aging or brightening.

You might be wondering why you would need a serum, considering that you probably already have a moisturizer. Serums allow for a more targeted approach to a specific skin care issue, and can also help to lock in the moisture from your usual moisturizing products to make them last longer, or to act as a lightweight refresher in the afternoon or evening.

Since serums are already a somewhat niche area of skin care, and men are less likely to even use basic skin care products like exfoliators or night creams, many of you probably feel a little overwhelmed by the serum section of the health and wellness industry.

So, we decided to make a comprehensive list of the 13 best face serums for men in 2024. This list will help you to find easy solutions for any skin care problem you have, and teach you more about the kinds of issues that serums are useful for, and the most important and prevalent ingredients in serums available on the market today.

1. Blu Atlas Vitamin C Serum

This Vitamin C Serum from Blu Atlas is the perfect start to our list of the 13 best face serums for men in 2023. Blu Atlas is a well-established men’s skin care brand that has some of the best products out there.

All of their products are created in consultation with a panel of dermatologists, so you can rest assured that your products are effective and safe. These products are also always cruelty-free, vegan, and have a money-back guarantee.

This face serum from Blu Atlas can also be used on any affected area, and is designed to correct dark spots or hyperpigmentation in the skin. This helps to produce a more even complexion, which can give you a more even skin tone.

Vitamin C is obviously one of the key ingredients used in this formula. Ascorbic acid is the most biologically active form of vitamin C, so it is the perfect choice to help to create the perfect complexion.

Ascorbic acid functions as an antioxidant, which means that it can reduce damaging molecules known as reactive oxidative species, or oxidizing agents. These are produced during daily life, and can result in premature aging, death, or stress to the cells of your skin. The use of ascorbic acid in this serum helps to deal with these oxidizing agents to detoxify the skin, and also provides skin-strengthening collagen.

Another antioxidant ingredient in this serum is apple fruit extract. This is a humectant, which means it is able to draw moisture to the surface from within the skin and from the atmosphere.

The humectant effect helps to make your skin firm and taut, which reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. As a result, the serum can reduce signs of aging, while preserving the moisture of the skin to protect it from environmental damages.

The final star ingredient in this serum from Blu Atlas is mulberry root extract, which is yet another antioxidant. However, its function in this serum is to calm the signs of irritation like redness and raised skin. This makes it perfect for a serum that aims to even the skin tone and reduce hyperpigmentation.

2. TruSkin Vitamin C Facial Serum

Another vitamin C-heavy serum, this one from small business TruSkin is designed to get rid of signs of aging and function as a skin brightening serum. This involves a few different ingredients.

The serum is designed to be used morning and/or night, which means that it is gentle enough to be used multiple times per day. This is great for those who often need a little top up of moisture throughout the day.

This product uses vitamin C along with hyaluronic acid, vitamin E, aloe vera, MSM, and jojoba oil to create a brightening effect through the combination of natural botanical products, antioxidants, and nutrients. As a bonus, this serum is also vegan and cruelty-free.

Hyaluronic acid is a very hydrating ingredient that helps to produce moisture in the skin. This helps to firm the skin and reduces the depth of wrinkles, as well as minimizing associated shadows on the skin that artificially increase the depth of the wrinkles. This adds to the anti-aging benefits of the serum.

Vitamin E is another antioxidant, which is also a nutrient that we need to keep our skin healthy and nourished. We usually get this vitamin from food, which means that it can sometimes be lacking in the skin, particularly if you are at the beginning stages of deficiency. Having a serum like this that you can easily add to your routine without disrupting your normal process is a great option for when you have been a little light on vitamin E sources in your diet lately.

This product also contains aloe vera, another hydrating product that is full of antioxidants. This is a very common additive in skin care products for a reason—it is very soothing and effective at smoothing and brightening the face. Aloe also provides numerous nutrients for the skin that help prevent damage and keep you looking fresh.

MSM is a naturally-derived product that is known for creating collagen under the skin. Collagen is one of two molecules that is primarily responsible for the tension of your skin. It works alongside elastin to help keep your skin both relaxed enough to stretch, and strong enough not to tear. It is a fantastic addition to have in a serum where you can add it as and when you think your skin is a little fragile.

Finally, this product contains jojoba oil, which is another really well-established health and beauty product for good reason. This is very chemically similar to sebum, which is naturally secreted by the skin. In fact, it is so close that jojoba is more easily able to pass through the skin’s barriers, and penetrate deep into the skin to offer hydration and nutrients to the layers of skin that need it most.

This serum is absolutely packed full of great ingredients that are proven to help your skin with a variety of issues, so it makes an excellent addition to our list of the 13 best face serums for men in 2023.

3. Caldera Lab The Good Serum

Caldera Lab formulated this multifunctional serum to be used at night. Unlike most serums, The Good Serum is not designed to be worn during the day, as it may give your face an oily or slick look.

However, the extra weight to the serum is part of what makes it so effective. This clinically proven serum has data to support the fact that it can help reduce the effects of aging and works on all skin types.

Some of the effects of aging that it can diminish include reducing loose skin by firming and smoothing the skin, which helps to reduce wrinkles and fine lines. It can also reduce the appearance of dark spots.

The Good Serum is also designed for a specific climate, so you can adjust the recommended dose for climate and whether your skin is oily or dry to give the best results. You may want to experiment with changing up the dose if you continue using the product in different seasons as well.

This product is designed with organic ingredients that function to restore the skin, as well as hydrating and nourishing it. Although these ingredients have not been disclosed, we know that they are effective through the independent third party results from clinical trials carried out in 2023.

These results include a whopping 87% of men which found that they had visibly reduced fine lines. Eighty percent of the men involved noticed they looked younger, while 83% self-reported clearer skin. Finally, 89% of men found that they had increased brightness in their face and had more radiant skin. We can’t speak for anyone else, but we liked those odds so much that we decided to add this serum to our list of the 13 best face serums for men in 2023.

4. Manskin Natural Outcome Supreme Moisture Serum

This gel serum is a little bit different from the usual oily liquid formulas. It has been formulated by the brand Natural Outcome to target skin that is especially dry resulting in rough or damaged skin.

It is named Supreme Moisture Serum for good reason, as it contains hyaluronic acid, argan oil, and vitamin E. This helps to create a very hydrating serum that also exfoliates and rejuvenates the skin.

Hyaluronic acid is the key ingredient in this serum given its ability to draw moisture to the skin. When skin is rough and damaged, the most common issue is that it is too dry, creating flakes of dead skin.

One of the problems with this is that when these flakes either fall or are removed they can also drag away healthy attached skin, leaving behind a small wound. This makes the skin much more prone to infection. Giving the skin more moisture helps to detach these flakes without damaging the underlying healthy skin.

Another key ingredient is vitamin E. This is both a nutrient and an antioxidant. Antioxidants are very important in cases of dry and damaged skin because damage promotes oxidizing agents, which can cause even more damage in a terrible feedback loop.

Vitamin E can help to reduce this damage by stopping the formation of those oxidizing molecules, which inhibits the damaged skin from becoming more damaged, and helps the skin to repair itself. The nutrients provided also help to repair the skin and prevent further irritations.

Finally, argan oil is useful both as a moisturizing agent, and as an antimicrobial or antifungal agent. This means that if there are any small wounds from rough or broken skin, the potential for infection is reduced by the existence of microbe-killing compounds in the serum to repair the damage.

5. Brickell Repairing Night Serum

Brickell designed their Repairing Night Serum specifically to work overnight. It is targeted towards repairing signs of aging as you sleep, so you can look your freshest in the morning.

The key ingredient in this serum is of course vitamin C, which is clearly established as a fantastic protective and restorative agent in skin care. Other beneficial ingredients include MSM, hyaluronic acid, plant stem cells, and green tea.

We already covered MSM and hyaluronic acid fairly comprehensively, but as a reminder, these ingredients help to produce collagen and moisture in the skin respectively, and are useful for reducing signs of aging like fine lines and wrinkles.

Plant stem cells are a unique and intriguing choice of ingredient for an anti-aging serum. Stem cells are cells that have no specialized functions, but are used to spawn fully differentiated cells throughout the organism. In simpler terms, you can imagine stem cells as the basic material that all the organized and specially functioning cells in the body are made from.

So why are they important for repairing the signs of aging? Plant stem cells are ridiculously high in antioxidants, and are more concentrated than other plant extracts. This makes it a perfect addition to a serum to reduce the signs of aging overnight, as the abundance of antioxidants will help to nullify any damage done throughout the day.

Some examples of damage from the day that often creates aged skin if left unchecked include too much exposure to the sun’s UV rays, or pollution in the air. Environmental toxins like pollution can easily stick to the skin, and can often cause damage overnight. Even washing with soap and water is unlikely to remove all the urban pollutants from your skin, so a nighttime serum like this one is always a good addition to your skincare routine.

Green tea is known as a tasty beverage enjoyed across the world for thousands of years. However, more recent research has found a bevy of health-related benefits to green tea, including a high level of antioxidants and nutrients that make this a great ingredient for an anti-aging serum.

6. Wild Mountain Peptide Face Serum for Men

Peptide Face Serum for Men was created to help to repair the strength of the skin, and works especially well if you aren’t 100% sure what’s going on with your face. It is moisturizing without being overly wet, and can also help to refresh the tone of the face while treating underlying issues with the structure of the skin. This makes it a great starting product while you narrow down what could be upsetting your skin.

This serum’s main function is to produce collagen in the skin. Collagen sits in a layer of the skin known as the cortex, and it functions in conjunction with another molecule known as elastin.

Collagen is essential for the skin to maintain itself as a barrier to disease and to prevent infection, but it is also important for maintaining how your skin looks. The botanical products in this serum encourage the renewal of peptides (which are the building blocks of proteins) in the skin.

This product is especially great as an aftershave serum, because the skin is remarkably vulnerable after it has just been shaved. Especially if you are shaving rough or unexfoliated skin, the razor tends to bump and skip over the skin instead of glide. This causes the skin to swell, become red, and is often painful as well as obvious.

When you add a peptide-enriching serum like this one as an aftershave, it helps to strengthen the skin that has just been damaged by the razor. This helps to restore the skin more efficiently, and reduces the risk of razor bumps.

7. Retinol Men Anti-Wrinkle Facial Serum

Facial serums are often used for correcting small spots of skin that need intense repair. And one of the most common complaints is the most obvious sign of aging, which is wrinkles, fine lines, and skin spots.

Retinol is a very strong skincare ingredient commonly found in prescription-strength products. This product uses retinol to help reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by plumping the skin and diminishing dark spots or hyperpigmentation for skin clarity.

Retinol Men Anti-Wrinkle Facial Serum provides the known benefits of retinol, which means that you can be confident that you will get results when you use this serum. It is also gentle enough to be used twice daily, which is rare for retinol products. This means that it’s effective enough to make a difference, while not being too strong and causing irritation to the fragile skin.

8. Yeouth Retinol Serum

Another retinol serum from small business Yeouth is suitable as an all-rounder serum to help hydrate, soothe, cleanse, and moisturize the skin while also using retinol to provide anti-aging benefits.

Like many other serums, this product contains hyaluronic acid and vitamin E. These function to help hydrate the skin and produce the nutrients and antioxidants required to keep skin healthy and soft.

However, this serum also contains aloe vera, which is a much more heavyweight moisturizer than is typically used in a serum like this. In particular, the aloe vera makes the serum so heavy that it is only recommended to be used at night.

This night serum uses retinol to produce an even skin tone, while the hydrating power of aloe vera produces firm skin with a soft and smooth complexion. We added it to our list because it also comes with an expiration date, due to the natural product formulation, which is often neglected on other serums. This helps you to keep track of how long you have left to use up the rest of the product.

Yeouth also offers a money-back guarantee that lasts up to 90 days. That means you have about three months to decide if you like the product, which should be plenty of time to see results, even for something as subtle as signs of aging.

9. Beauty by Earth HyperActive Anti-Aging Vitamin C Serum

Even though you must be getting tired of hearing about the nourishing properties of vitamin C, we never get tired of telling you about it. This ingredient is on full display in the HyperActive Anti-Aging Vitamin C Serum developed by Beauty by Earth.

This antioxidant-rich, aloe vera-imbued, anti-aging vitamin C serum is unique on our list because it is designed to be used after another serum. This serum should follow a hyaluronic facial serum, or after another form of hydration like a moisturizer.

This is because this serum is meant to reduce hyperpigmentation and acne rather than functioning as a multipurpose serum. It can hold its own as an individual serum, as well as being a really useful part of your overall skincare routine.

10. Neutrogena Hydro Boost Hyaluronic Acid Serum

This serum is designed by the skincare experts at Neutrogena. The brand is so well known because they create effective and specialized products for all skin types and textures, and their Hydro Boost Hyaluronic Acid Serum is no different.

Some of the products on this list are based on very naturally-derived ingredients, which by and large is a great idea. Unfortunately, some natural products can also be very irritating to people with sensitive skin, as they often contain trace elements of other compounds that usually go undetected.

Neutrogena on the other hand uses hyaluronic acid and glycerin to produce a moisturizing hydrating serum. This combination helps to reduce dryness on the skin, and it is an optimal choice for when you have irritated dry skin that just needs a quick pick-me-up, but you don’t want to potentially expose it to unknown compounds.

11. Beauty by Earth Youth Restoration Bakuchiol Face Serum

This serum has been included on this list because it contains a unique ingredient. Although the product also contains more mainstream ingredients like hyaluronic acid, it also contains bakuchiol, which is a natural alternative to retinol.

Retinol is a very effective product, but it sometimes causes irritation to the skin. People with sensitive skin often struggle with finding age-reducing serums that don’t include retinol, which can create more harm than good if used on their skin type.

Thus, Beauty by Earth created this serum as an effective alternative. It still helps to reduce skin discoloration, wrinkles, and fine lines, but also soothes the skin and prevents irritation in a way that retinol often fails to do.

12. Instant Face Lift Serum

We thought that we would add this product to our list of the 13 best face serums for men in 2023 because it shows the wide variety of products available in serum form for skin care.

Instant Face Lift Serum by Vifycim is designed to give your face an instant lift, which helps you to look younger when you don’t have weeks or months to create a lasting effect. It can be used on the undereye area, forehead, cheeks, or neck and creates a tight layer over the skin.

This tight layer then forms an artificial, temporary face lift that lasts for about 12 hours. Instant Face Lift Serum may take some time to get used to, as your application technique is very important to creating good results. For instance, you can’t make a funny face even when stretching to reach a particularly difficult spot to straighten out.

This cream may sound rather harsh and chemical compared to some of the other products on this list, but it may surprise you. It is created with some naturally-derived elements, and is also able to hydrate the face while being gentle on the skin.

13. Youth to the People 15% Vitamin C + Clean Caffeine EnergySerum

The last product on our list of the 13 best face serums for men in 2023 is the Youth to the People 15% Vitamin C + Clean Caffeine Energy Serum that includes our old faithful ingredient, vitamin C. This product is the perfect end to our list because it relies solely on the revitalizing power of vitamin C, with a little extra kick from caffeine.

Caffeine provides a well-established effect of brightening and tightening the skin, and can also help to reduce discoloration through changing the vasodilation (how wide the veins are) of close blood vessels. This helps to create a faster blood flow, which brings a flush to the skin as well as a glowy, fresh look.

Combined with vitamin C, this serum is like the ultimate shot of liquid energy to your facial skin. It’s a great option for when you’re facing a late night or a really heavy workload but still want to look your best.